Looks like Raymore and Belton are on the list.
"There are still unanswered questions about Google Fiber expanding its services to Raymore, but some concrete details emerged in an unlikely place May 19.

At the training facility behind the South Metro Fire District station, the department’s board of directors held its monthly meeting and unanimously passed a contract with the tech giant to lease a small plot of land for a Google Fiber hut.

With the vote, the first official step in Google Fiber’s likely expansion to Raymore was solidified.

Google released a brief statement, revealing Belton is also a potential expansion city.

“We continue to work alongside local leaders as we explore bringing Google Fiber to Raymore and Belton,” said spokeswoman Rachel Merlo by email
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Raymore residents are likely more than a year away from installation in homes, according to Mike Ekey, Raymore’s communications manager.
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The company’s current cheapest Kansas City offering is listed at $50 per month for 100 megabits per second. Broadband service up to 1 gigabit per second, or 1,000 megabits, costs $70 per month.

Current high-speed Internet providers operating in Raymore include Xfinity and AT&T U-verse. Xfinity offers 2 gigabits per second for $299.95 per year, excluding installation and activation fees totaling $1,000.

And they have 250M option for $50 with 2 year contract (offered until June 21). Outside the 2Gb service Comcast has a 1Terabyte/month limit for the other tiers. That's quite a bit but Google Fiber is unlimited.

BTW, if your ISP situation/plans have changed, can change your vote at the top of this page.

KC area now has 5 residential Gigabit+ players - likely more than anywhere in country: Google Fiber, ATT Gigapower, Surewest/CCI, LiNKCity (North KC) and now Comcast. TWC offers up to 300M. St. Joe also has Suddenlink Gigabit and Lawrence has Wicked Gigabit - $100/mo both places.

I signed up for service last fall in Shawnee (I believe I'm in the "Parkway South" fiberhood). Construction still hasn't started, so I called last week to find out what was going on. I was told they had to start over from scratch on the design for some reason and had just received a permit extension from the city, but the guy I talked to had no ETA for when construction would begin or service would be available. He did say that if I signed up for a different service that required a contract and Google Fiber became available during that time, I could delay the install until the end of my contract with no penalty and without losing my place in line.

It's not just because of Google Fiber, it's also because KC metro now has 5 Gigabit providers (GF, AT&T Gigapower, Surewest/CCI, Comcast, LiNKCity muni in North KC as well). And TWC offers 300M to about 2/3 of metro.

But what's interesting is that KC may benefit long term from being one of few markets with near metro wide Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH). Google is now looking at doing fixed wireless for future cities rather than FTTH (or maybe not as much FTTH). FTTH is more reliable, has better latency and has more capacity than wireless but more expensive to rollout than fixed wireless. Other fiber ISPs are not doing city wide fiber rollouts, just where logistically easy to roll out. So even though more cities are getting Gigabit, KC may end up being one of few markets with near metro wide FTTH and likely with the most competition long term.

Step 1: Get a bunch of people to sign up for your service.
Step 2: Take several years to roll out service.
Step 3: Many customers ask for their deposit back
Step 4: Cut staff because subscriber base isn't as big as you hoped.

I signed up in December, but many of my neighbors signed up more than a year ago, and from what I've been told by Google, their permits expired and they had to start all over again on planning for our neighborhood. Meanwhile, at least one neighbor has gotten her deposit back. This is in Shawnee, near 67th and Pflumm.

brewcrew1000 wrote:Atlanta has like 5/6 million in its metro but I bet the rollout is super slow

They only have agreements with about 1/5 of ATL metro, under 1M population if I recall and the rollout has barely started, available to just a couple dozen apts/condos. GF has agreements with over half of KC metro, over 1M pops.

Is highly unlikely Google really thought they'd have 5M subs in 5 years - maybe it was mentioned as a potential target very early in GF proposal phase before even selecting KC and media is running with it. They are only passing about 75K-100K homes/units per year per market and would likely only get 30%-35% of homes passed long term given all the competition especially in KC and first several markets. TWC's offering 50/5 for $30 only in KC market, which is a pretty good deal and probably impacting GF uptake rate. Comcast is offering 250/35 for $50 only in KC market. GF probably underestimated competition dumping rates to snuff them out.

Certainly GF knew rollout would be slow given they have to start from scratch. Cincy Bell is rolling out fiber and they have existing right of ways yet only passing up to 100K homes/year. Surewest/CCI bought out Aquila/Everest fiber in KC and overall only passes 100K homes in 15 years with only 20K customers (20% uptake). GF has to establish right of ways from scratch and the incumbent ISPs aren't making it easy for them in most markets.

KC is very fortunate to have as much fiber as there are now 5 Gigabit players in the area with 3 broadly rolling out fiber with quite a bit already completed relative to any market. Is likely KC has more actual FTTH than any market. Google Fiber alone has spent $1B already in KC market with over 7K miles of fiber. ATT likely has second most and they have been picking up steam with KC Gigapower rollout.

It's possible. I suspect they stay in the industry as long as they feel they have an influence and on path to get ROI (fiber is a long term investment). Google's overall biz model is dependent on what ISPs do, like imposing monthly data caps. That report alone doesn't indicate they are quitting. They are backing off future announced markets and looking into fixed wireless (which still does fiber to streetlights, aka fiber-to-the-node FTTN). They have several upcoming markets now on hold so may have laid off staff that were focused on upcoming markets. Still not a good sign but not necessarily indication they go away. If they pursue fixed wireless and can do it more cost effectively, they may stay in for long haul.

But the traditional ISPs will continue to try and snuff them out as they can afford to dump rates in a few markets, which are a relatively small % of their national footprint. KC consumers win in the end with the price war and all the fiber already rolled out.

Last edited by earthling on Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

grovester wrote:The line between internet and tv provider is gone in google's case. Are you watching tv or are you streaming google?

Instead of TV service maybe I should have said cable provider. I have a large number of channels offered on cable and of course a large majority of them I only watch when surfing or even know about when I look at the guide. So that begs a question. If all of those choices are available with streaming does it or will it affect downloading? They talk about the restrictions of cable, do those kinds of restrictions affect streaming, wireless or wired?
Ratings were down for the NCAA Basketball final since it was only on cable. Wonder what would happen if some sporting events landed on Netflix or something similar.

While I really enjoy Google Fiber service when I use it at other's homes, I decided to pass for the time being due to the massive delays in construction, and more importantly, their complete inability to provide a definitive timeline for completion of such.

Completion of GF to my building was well over a year late, and I was frequently told to just "wait for an email" with confirmation of time/date to schedule install.

I will still likely switch to GF at some point, perhaps if/when I move, but I have to imagine there are many others like me that simply grew weary of a very prolonged, and frankly unprofessional rollout?

rxlexi wrote:While I really enjoy Google Fiber service when I use it at other's homes, I decided to pass for the time being due to the massive delays in construction, and more importantly, their complete inability to provide a definitive timeline for completion of such.

Completion of GF to my building was well over a year late, and I was frequently told to just "wait for an email" with confirmation of time/date to schedule install.

I will still likely switch to GF at some point, perhaps if/when I move, but I have to imagine there are many others like me that simply grew weary of a very prolonged, and frankly unprofessional rollout?

Unprofessional Rollout is a perfect way to sum up GF. Why didn't they just completely build this out in dense hoods in KCK and KCMO then started marketing it, then started getting customers, its like they did it completely backwards and might end up costing them in the long run.

I watched one guy hookup to a row of 10-15 homes. It took half the day. So 100 people doing installed it would still take years to do a hookup if not decades, if doing a complete buildout.

Now if you coordinate with who will actually signup in numbers sufficient to afford that you're talking about low density neighborhoods going first.

Their problem wasn't the lack of a complete buildout, it was the lack of an organized rollout plan. Like my home had issues with trees. They clearly didn't go through the neighborhood and figure out all the work to do to simplify the running of fiber well ahead of time. They came through when they were literally going to run to homes and only then figured out they had tree issues. Then it took 9 months to get trees trimmed. Had they sent a team into each area with a list of signed up homes immediatelly after signup completed and identified their routing and how many homes followed these paths, plus prerequisite work, they could have a dedicated tree trimming crew in front of every fiber run.

A lot of their apartment building delay came from this idea too. I worked in a downtown building and the team running the fiber only looked for paths the day they were ready to run fiber, I helped walk them around. When an owner expresses interest they should send someone out within a week or two and identify all issues. This lets the building owner provide access and such and complete needed items ahead of a scheduled fiber run date.

This all matters because scheduling follows difficulty. They should be doing simple runs with some teams handling quick and fast to maximize customer hookups and have other teams handling more complex setups. And by pre-scheduling work needed to actually run the fiber every home goes quicker. HOA issues, dogs, trees, etc should all be figured out for a block as a unit, not house by house.